This invention relates to electrical apparatus and more particularly to an interlock switch module for microwave ovens.
The design and construction of microwave ovens is governed by Federal Regulations promulgated by the Bureau of Radiological Health (BRH) to insure safe operation of such ovens.
BRH regulations require that an access door on a microwave oven be latched and interlocked to prevent opening the door while microwave radiation is present within the oven. At least two interlock switches are required to open up the electrical supply circuit to the oven's magnetron or other source of microwave radiation.
It has been common practice to meet BRH requirements with a plurality of independent switches, each separately mounted. Independent installation, wiring and adjustment of each switch is required to be made at the time the oven was assembled, resulting in a time consuming and hence costly step in the manufacture of microwave ovens. Furthermore, because such switches were typically independently mounted, attention was generally not given to the sequencing or relative timing of such switches, and even if properly sequenced and timed, such switches were subject to moving out of proper adjustment because of the many parts subject to loosening through vibration and wear.